1 {scene: cyberspace}1 Iki Piki: {casually} Hi Paris.1 Paris: You lost my body?!2 Serron: Spanners, you really need to warn us when you're about to flip us into cyberspace...3 Spanner: Mmmm. Sorry about that.3 Paris: You lost my body?!4 Paris: This is what happens when I go away and leave males in charge!

In my real life space campaign, Iki Piki is a pachekki, an alien species described in
GURPS Aliens. Pachekki are all
sex-changers. They go through a cycle of being alternately male and female. But I've never had
occasion (or really, desire) to explain that in the comic. So for the purposes of the comic,
Iki Piki is basically just male.

In fact, the information on Iki Piki's reproductive biology presented in #464
and #467 is completely different to how the pachekki work. So although he
resembles a pachekki, in Irregular Webcomic! canon, he isn't actually a pachekki.

2015-01-31 Rerun commentary: Not that Paris really had much choice with that "going away" thing.

The sex-changing cycle of the pachekki involves a switch between male and female every few days. It's an irregular cycle, with the switch occurring at somewhat random times (in-game it's controlled by a daily die roll). Since sex changing in itself has very little game effect (in most games), it comes with an associated change in personality, represented by switching between two different packages of game Disadvantages: female-state pachekki are impulsive and hyperactive, while male-state pachekki are lazy and lethargic. So in effect, the actual pertinent game fact about a pachekki character is that it switches between active and lazy personality states every few days, with the relatively minor side effect that these changes in personality are accompanied by a change of sex.